Plain Dealer On Zander’s Visit To Cleveland
admin February 7th, 2008
The Plain Dealer’s Donald Rosenberg has posted an article at Cleveland.com profiling Benjamin Zander and the concert on Sunday.
Zander, 68, is here at the invitation of Christopher Wilkins, music director of the Akron Symphony, a friend and colleague since the latter was an oboist in the former’s youth orchestra in Boston three decades ago.
Putting on Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony is a pricey endeavor requiring chorus, massive orchestra and vocal soloists (oh, and conductor). Zander helped solve the problem of expense by suggesting that the Akron Symphony find a corporation — FirstEnergy eventually signed on — to sponsor the concerts and his local talk on “The Art of Possibility,” which he has delivered several times at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Zander is accepting no fee for his services this week, a testament both to his friendship with Wilkins and to his mission to spread the word of classical music. He believes musicians are empowered when they have input in the artistic product.
The full article can be found here.
